Watched Coraline again. Watched some DP episodes. This happened.

This is just a preview to a story I may write in the future (I have WAY too many stories on my plate).

Disclaimer: Butch Hartman owns Danny Phantom, Neil Gaiman owns Coraline, and Henry Selick owns Wybie Lovat

Somehow, in the first two years of high school alone, Danny Fenton had grown to dislike field trips. Museums were boring (though the Amity Park Planetarium was highly entertaining for him), and that was enough of a reason--it was always museums. No trips to the zoo like in first grade.

Even though this current field trip had nothing to do with museums, Danny still got the urge to bang his head against the cold glass window. It was early February, just a bit into the spring semester, and the literature buff-slash-vice principal-slash-teacher of every subject Casper High had to offer had announced in January a field trip. The excitement of a week-long trip had faded when the destination was revealed to be the one and only Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. Lancer was disappointed in the lack of enthusiasm and had then decided that the trip was now worth extra credit--extra credit that Danny was, unfortunately, in dire need of.

"Sam…" Danny's voice came out sounding like a sleepy whine, "encourage me again."

"This is all gonna be worth it in the end," Sam said automatically, repeating the words almost like a mantra, "you won't die of boredom, though I can't promise you won't hemorrhage a little bit."

"Sam, do you even believe what you're saying anymore?" Tucker asked, peering over the back of his seat in front of them, "I thought you loved tragic plays. Cause they're like…tragic and full of death and killing."

"Well yeah," Sam sighed dramatically, "but being surrounded by all these uncultured urchins makes it less enjoyable for me."

"Don't cry, your mascara will run," Danny murmured, his eyes closed, "you'll look like…what is it? A harlequin."

"Ten point vocab word," Sam snickered, "your brain isn't mush yet."

"Gettin' there," Danny sighed, "I am so tired."

"Mr. Foley," Lancer's voice sounded from the front of the bus, "sit in that seat properly."

Tucker sighed, sitting back down and disappearing behind the seat in front of Sam and Danny.

All of the talking on the bus grew louder as it grew later in the day. Having been woken up a six AM on a Saturday to catch the bus, all of the teens were sleepy and had been hushed and whispering until about noon. Danny thought the din couldn't get any worse when the long awaited question was finally asked--

"Are we there yet?"

Mikey received a widespread sigh of frustration in reply.

Coraline Jones was bored.

It didn't help that all she was allowed to do was sit inside and stare at the freshly fallen snow on the ground. Her parents had forbidden her from going out until after she'd eaten her breakfast, even though she kept telling them she wasn't hungry. Adults just didn't realize how important the snow was--Coraline kept imagining why her parents had such a low threshold for fun. Maybe when you were twenty-one you had to go to some lab where they had big machine that sucked all the fun right out of you and replaced it with things like taxes and bill paying and possibly mandatory information on farming techniques and the stock market.

"It's snowing," Coraline reminded her parents, "see the white stuff on the ground? That's snow. It's for playing in, which I need to do."

"You need to eat," Mel Jones said firmly, "Take your multi-vitamin, then maybe you can go out. I don't want my daughter dying of malnourishment."

"Then stop letting dad cook," Coraline swallowed her vitamin, hating the feeling she got--like she was giving in. "Really. Can I go now?"

"Eat some of your eggs."

"You liar," Coraline grumbled, "seriously. This is insanity."

Despite her defiant thoughts telling her to ignore her mother, her stomach said she should just suck it up and eat. Once she put a decent dent in her eggs, she put her fork down and looked smugly at her mother. She needed to go and play--she promised Wybie a snowball fight and made a bet that she would win. She had five bucks riding on this, she couldn't be late or that cheater Wybie would claim her tardiness made him the winner by default.

"Don't forget to invite him to the Shakespeare festival tomorrow," Mel told her daughter as she headed for the door. Before Coraline could provide a reply Mel spoke again, "yes, you have to go."

Coraline let out a groan but didn't bother to stay inside and argue. She could do that later.